Banning greyhound racing is a part of the war on Sydney's working class

When I first arrived in Sydney in the early 1970s I lived for a time in Glebe and this was where I first saw greyhounds. I was fascinated by the ritual of these sleek dogs, as trim and taut as their owners, slinking through the narrow streets at dawn. It was such a thoroughly urban activity, such a mark of the working-class culture of this inner-city precinct, and something I had never seen growing up in middle-class Adelaide.

Not that I was ever into the dogs. Back then, when I was a bit of a punter, I preferred the horses. I'd rather go to Randwick than Wentworth Park any day. Nevertheless I respected the way a determined man (I don't recall seeing any women) and his dogs could earn a quid. You did not need a lot of money to run dogs, whereas horse racing is not called the sport of kings for nothing.

This was the context in which I reacted with disbelief, and then anger, to the announcement by Premier Mike Baird in February that he was going to close down the greyhound racing industry.

He was responding to the report of the Greyhound special commission of inquiry, conducted by former High Court judge Michael McHugh, which found widespread cruelty, including live-baiting, in greyhound racing in NSW.

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End of the race: With greyhound racing to shut down in NSW, what's to become of Wentworth Park?Credit:Anthony Johnson

These practices are indefensible and have to end. It's how you do it that is at issue.

McHugh offered Baird two options: close down the industry, or maintain and reform it to improve transparency and reduce the level of greyhound deaths.

Why did Baird ignore the second option? Why wasn't Greyhounds NSW (GRNSW) put on notice and told they'd be closed down in, say, 12 months if they did not end these terrible practices?

If the Premier was really worried about animal cruelty and animal deaths in competitive racing why didn't he also look at horse racing? What happens to the 2000 NSW horses each year that are not deemed fast enough to race? (Given that there are a total of 2000 horses racing, that's a "wastage" rate of 50 per cent; McHugh found a wastage rate of 50-70 per cent in the greyhound industry over the past 12 years).

Why did the Premier also overlook that McHugh's report conceded that the greyhound industry was trying to improve itself? In fact, it complained that these attempts to change the industry were getting in the way of the inquiry.

"One of the difficulties the commission faced in conducting the inquiry was the continual changing of the regulation of the industry after February 2015," the report's preface states. "Under the leadership of the new interim chief executive, GRNSW abandoned many former practices and introduced new policies and rules that regulated the industry. Throughout the inquiry, the commission regularly found itself in the position that, after investigating an aspect of the industry, GRNSW introduced new policies and rules regulating that particular aspect of the industry. In some cases these changes – although intended for the betterment of the industry – required the commission to re-evaluate matters that it had already evaluated to some extent."

So why didn't the Baird government take into account that GRNSW was acting towards "the betterment of the industry"? Why wasn't the industry allowed to clean itself up?

To me this is just one more example of Mike Baird waging war on the city's working class. Just as he had when he sold off the terraces of Miller's Point to millionaires, displacing a working-class community that had been there for decades. As he also wants to do with the low-income people who live in the Sirius apartments just under the Bridge. And the residents of the Waterloo towers fear this will also be their fate.

And what is the common denominator in all these actions?

Sydney gold, of course. Real estate. Wentworth Park is prime inner-city real estate. The government says it will not sell Wentworth Park to developers. They need to be held to that but – call me cynical – would a government that is prepared to sell a beloved museum, the Powerhouse, to developers have qualms about offloading a dog track?

Meanwhile over at Randwick, the horse racing industry quickly and quietly moved to ensure that "all NSW thoroughbred racehorses will be appropriately cared for outside of their racing careers". The measures will cover ex-racing horses "as well as those thoroughbred horses that never made it to the race track".

In response to media questions Racing NSW chief executive Peter V'Landys said the industry was acting because of what had happened to the greyhound industry. In other words, without the spotlight of an ABC expose or a government inquiry, horse racing has been allowed to clean up its act, a privilege denied the dogs.

That's what made me angry and why I do not support a biased and unfair decision that will mean thousands of working-class people in this state lose their livelihood.